TomF75

BofA's Merrill Purchase: Good for America, Bad for Them

Before we go declaring Ken Lewis a saint with full honors from the Vatican, LETS GET REAL!! If John Thain could "pull the wool" over Mr. Lewis' eyes than maybe he isn't sophisticated enough to be running a "Financial Supermarket". What his excuse for overpaying for that pig Countrywide. Was he just soo enamored of Mr. Mozillo's tan that he had to gobble up the whole company when almost everyone with a brain new we were in the first few innings of a major crap storm.

Ken Lewis didn't buy ML to "Save America" he bought it b/c he was scared of getting left in the dust by WFC and JPM when the storm clears, plain and simple. The difference is both WFC and JPM were smart enough to wait until AFTER their "partners/victims" were seizied by the Feds to pony up the $$$ to make the deal.

Five Missing Pieces to the Stimulus Plan

I think you hit the nail on the head. According to my math TARP + Stimulus = $1.525 Trillion. That works out to about $5,083/person (assuming 300M Americans).

Here's a novel idea, send me & my wife a check for $10,166 and I guarantee we'll do a better job stimulating the economy than either of these two boondoggles has or will accomplish!!


On Jan 29 09:46 PM Captainess wrote:

> Should also add in eliminating pork barrel spending and special interest
> projects. Supposedly $650 million more on digital tv conversion coupons??
> Are we going to pay Oprah to star in more ads warning about the perils
> of not getting the right tv? Hey, how about giving that $650 mil
> to everyone to just buy a new tv for some direct stimulus...

Dividend Stocks: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

About a week or 2 ago PFF popped up on my radar screen. As of this writing, I see a dividend of 10.62%. HOWEVER, when I dug deeper I noticed that not "some" but "most" of the stocks are financial related...76% to be exact (the rest utilities). I'm not ready to trust any of these banks, since even the "good ones" (e.g. BAC) seem to still have scary $hit hiding in their balance sheets somewhere...Invest @ your own peril!!


On Jan 30 09:04 AM hazenyc wrote:

> if you're looking for a more diversified high-dividend-yield there
> are too good ETFs that have 11-14% yield and have been trading fairly
> stabily over the recent bloodletting.. tickers are:
> PFF and PGF ..
> they both contain preferreds, corporate bonds and shares in the ETF..
> disclaimer: some of the companies are kinda toxic but certainly outperforming
> their common share counterparts - includes the likes of WFC, USB,
> FCX, C, MET, ABN, JPM, C, MS, GS, ING etc
> so just an idea to play with!